The objective of my experiment was to observe what happened when a sample of ovis aries (sheep blood) mixes with a treatment of distilled water and decide what osmotic process took place.

The objective of my experiment was to observe what happened when a sample of ovis aries (sheep blood) mixes with a treatment of distilled water and decide what osmotic process took place. When Investigating Diffusion through Live Matters, we must know that diffusion takes place along a concentration gradient of high to low until evenly distributed, whereas osmosis is an example of diffusion where water will flow through a selectively permeable membrane. Similarly, the chemical structure of the plasma membrane is selectively permeable about what passes through (osmosis) by letting nutrients enter the cell but also keeping undesirable substances out through diffusion. To continue on, concentration of water is inversely related to the concentration of solutes, like saline (sodium chloride). If saline can diffuse across the membrane, both water and saline will move down the concentration gradients through the membrane. If saline is prevented from crossing the membrane, only water will move in a passive process called selective permeability. When a solution has the ability to cause a change in cell shape or tone by promoting osmotic flow this is referred to as Tonicity. Moreover, during our investigation if sheep’s blood is mixed with the same concentration of water as inside this means that our treatment is Isotonic (0.9% saline) which means our red blood cells will not change size or shape. If the red blood cells moves from high to low concentration this means that our sheep’s blood cell is losing water and can be observed by red blood cells shrinking in size by osmosis in a hypertonic (10% Saline) solution, but if our sheep’s blood moves from a low to high concentration gradient a cell will take on distilled water until they swell and lyse (burst), referred to as a hypotonic solution (0% saline). If our sheep’s blood is a normal or isotonic blood osmolarity (0.9% saline or 5% glucose) this will mean that, osmotic and hydrostatic pressure acting at the membrane are equal, and osmosis/diffusion of water stops. However, we will be using the diffusion of hypotonic water through red blood cells to demonstrate osmosis. The independent variable will be the hypotonic solution, secondly, the dependent variable is the size of red blood cells, and lastly the controlled variable is the diffusion of concentrated gradient.

Objective:

The overall goal of this experiment is to prove that when cells take on too much distilled water by osmosis, cells will become bloated and eventually lyse because the concentration of solutes outside of the cell is too low to keep diffusing through the cells.

Hypothesis:

If a hypotonic solution of distilled water is added to red blood cells, then the size of my red blood cells will swell and eventually lyse.

Materials/Procedure:

To conduct the procedure one small drop of sheep’s blood sample is put on a slide with a wooden stick applicator along with one drop of distilled water. Although a required temperature was not stated in our investigation, our sample was basically mixed with a cover-slip placed on top which did not require a time limit. Observations of our hypotonic cell was made by a microscope under 40x, then 100x, and then high power 400x, but the cells were visualized with a magnification of 100x. A change or swelling in size of the red blood cells was the objective while looking under 100x magnification.

Results:

When sheep’s blood was treated with the hypotonic solution we saw that our red blood cells were red, round, and scattered. Compared to an isotonic solution, red blood cells in distilled water were expanded more than the normal size of a red blood cell under magnification.

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